First post on this acc but me and my husband currently live with his mother and little brother (who is 15).. Quick background info MIL was in abusive relationship with husband for 30 yrs and recently separated w/ him and got a restraining order, so FIL no longer lives with us so my husband is currently paying most of the house bills. His familys whack and his little brothers been isolated his whole life due to an over-sheltering father, has no friends, doesn’t go out or do normal teenager things, etc.
So anyway, I am pregnant currently and work part time and clean daily, I am tired of being the only one to be cleaning daily so I told my MIL that her 15 yo son should be helping me clean since he does literally nothing all day (hes "homeschooled", doesn’t actually do school work) literally has no friends, spends his whole day on youtube and god knows what. Everyone else contributes in some way or another but his little brother doesnt do any age appropriate tasks to help out and it gets on my nerves, anyway told MIL he should be helping me clean and my husband was backing me up agreeing his little brother should be and MIL gets angry and says we arent his parents and can’t tell him what to do and that basically, if he doesn’t want to clean he doesn’t have to, and said I shouldn’t be coming into peoples houses and telling them how to parent.. Escalates into further discussion where I basically tell her she needs to make him do some chores and get out, whether its put him in public school or make him get a part time job, something, and this pisses her off as well bc she says he can’t just be thrown to the wolves like that and he won’t know how to act in those situations and that he’ll have an anxious breakdown, and I tell her she needs to stop acting like hes a special gem and that he needs to be treated like a normal teenager, and that I look at his life and see it as depressing and no way to live at 15. She tells me I don’t know anything and that I haven’t lived in his shoes and that we shouldn’t be picking on him and I need to focus on my own child, and I’m like ok but literally how am I picking on him for wanting him to help me do basic house chores ??? Why is he a special gem who can’t do any work whatsoever????? Like wouldn’t most parents want their child to be disciplined and have basic contribution to the house they live in.. She still cleans his room for him and does his laundry, its actually insane. Am I rlly the asshole here for thinking he needs to contribute more and have more independence and that his mother is setting him back
That 15 years old was not oversheltered. He was abused, isolated and neglected. That is the situation you are in.
Yeah I 100% agree but trying to explain that her is a nightmare. We are trying to help him by slowly taking him to more public spaces and giving him tasks to help him socialize with people more. Everytime I bring it up to my MIL she gets defensive tho so 🤷♀️ we’ve told her multiple times he needs to be enrolled in school and she says hes incapable of doing it to which I say how does she know if she hasn’t tried
NTA. She would not have a house if you weren’t there taking care of it. Obviously context matters, you shouldn’t be overly aggressive about this but make it clear that this isn’t sustainable. I mean, even the “homeschooling” is basically abusive lol, depending on where you live, you can probably have CPS or some other agency come and see that the child is being neglected and they will step in.
Obviously everyone thinks that this is a terrible thing to do to someone, but this child seems to have been abused by his father and is now being abused by his mother who won’t teach him how to survive or make him go to school.